


leave some space for her in your head

by queenbaskerville



Category: Supernatural, White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: (for supernatural), (for white collar), Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 03, Season/Series 01, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28148637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: “Bela Talbot,” Neal said. “Got her fingerprints all over it. Metaphorically speaking.”
Relationships: Neal Caffrey & Bela Talbot, Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	leave some space for her in your head

**Author's Note:**

> why am I writing about neal caffrey and bela talbot in 2020? this is like. THE niche content that’s only gonna appeal to me 
> 
> anyway quick one-shot just to get the idea out of my head. bela dies in spn s3 2008 & this fic would be set early s1 of white collar 2009
> 
> fic title from “thief” by the fratellis

Peter’s got Neal sifting through a box of cold cases, which he knows is a mix of loathsome and intriguing for him—slogging through all that paperwork can be such a drag, but Neal loves a good puzzle when he can find one, and loves showing off whenever he can solve one. Neal hasn’t taken his lunch break, though, which doesn’t seem right, so Peter makes his way down to Neal’s desk to see what’s going on.

“Ah,” Peter says knowingly. “Stuck on one of our weirder cases?”

Most of what came through their office involved mortgage fraud, insider trading, other boring things. Then there was forgery, which ranged from bonds to masterpieces (though Neal, of course, would argue that a bond forgery could be a masterpiece), and then there were art heists, and then there was what Neal had in his hands: weird occult objects. Some rich people liked Van Goghs, other rich people liked magic beans—and anything that’s worth anything sometimes get stolen, no matter how odd it is. 

“Not stuck,” Neal says. He’s got a wistful little smile on his face. “Bela Talbot. Got her fingerprints all over it. Metaphorically speaking.”

“I don’t know that name,” Peter says. One of Neal’s old girlfriends? Another Kate crawling out of the woodwork?

“She was fascinated with the occult,” Neal says. “If I had, hypothetically speaking, ever done jobs with her, it would’ve been the procuring of an occult item for a client of hers, or if she had a personal interest in a particular item—“

“I get the picture,” Peter says. “Bet Mozzie had a field day. Seems right up his alley.”

Neal’s still got that wistful, almost sad look on his face. “Mozzie—again, hypothetically speaking—would’ve pulled more jobs with her than me. He was—he would’ve been like a fond uncle figure. Probably. You know. If they had known each other—“

Neal’s usually better at hinting and implying crimes; this is a little clumsy. Like he’s barely even trying. Peter pokes at it a little more.

“They don’t still pull jobs together?” he asks.

“She died last year,” Neal says.

Oh. 

Look, Peter hasn’t been working with Neal for very long. And he would sleep better at night if Neal would stop missing—and stop attempting to leap headfirst back into—his criminal lifestyle. But Peter’s not heartless, and there’s grief here, so he does the only thing he can thing to do—he doesn’t criticize him, doesn’t mock him, doesn’t try to pin any charges on him—he says nothing, and he squeezes Neal’s shoulder.

Neal looks up at him with surprise, but he gives Peter a small, tired smile before looking back down at the files in front of him. 

“If Mozzie’s got any cursed objects,” Peter says, “I don’t want to know. Just don’t let him use them on me.”

Neal laughs. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Peter,” he said. 

* * *

  
  
Neal goes through the files and sorts them into two piles: probably or certainly Bela, and definitely not Bela. It’s fairly easy. There’s a timetable, for one. Some of these crimes were committed before she came to the U.S. Some were committed before she was even born. And then, of course, anything after 2008 couldn’t have been her. Neal still remembers Kate telling him on one of her visits.

 _ One of our friends called me, _ she said. Mozzie, of course. For all their working connections, they didn’t have many actual friends.  _ Bela passed away. Some sort of animal attack. I’m sorry, Neal. _

It had stunned him. There’d been a sick feeling in his gut that worsened the more he turned the thought over in his mind—Bela Talbot, dead—

He hadn’t noticed her birthday pass. Probably not her real birthday, but the year, he was almost certain, had been real. He felt sick.

There’d been one particular job she and Mozzie pulled—she’d been so thrilled by it that she met Neal and Kate the next city over and gotten drunk with them. The nicest suite in the hotel, and it was Bela and Mozzie and Neal and Kate all wine drunk and listening to Cher, and Bela and Mozzie spent half the night collapsing with laughter—she’d always had a soft spot for him,  _my favorite conspiracy theorist_ , and they’d get excited about bizarre and otherworldly things together—Neal hadn’t been lying when he said he believed that she thought of Mozzie like a fun uncle—

Mozzie and Kate crashed out first, and then it was Bela and Neal drinking alone, and the night turned soft the way wine-drunk nights do, and she’d been in tears when she whispered,  _ I’m going to be dead by twenty-four. _

Neal can’t even remember what he said. Something denying it, something comforting, he knew it was something like that. They’d been so young then, him and Kate and Bela, and they lived lives full of risk, the future some great abyss waiting to swallow them up while they sprinted across the tightropes of their day-to-day thrills, but Neal thought they all lived by that denial of mortality, that they needed it. Conmen and conwomen trying to be untouchable. He hadn’t wanted her to believe she’d die so young. He hadn’t wanted to believe it of himself, either, so he hadn’t wanted to hear her say anything about it.  _ You’re not dying, _he’d probably said.  _ Bela, Bela, it’s going to be alright.  You’re going to be old and grey and swimming in money. Bela. You’ll outlive us all. _

In the morning, Bela had given Mozzie a kiss on the forehead, given Kate a kiss on the lips, and smacked Neal’s ass on the way out the door. Bela never spoke about the conversation that night ever again. Neal hadn’t brought it up either.

Years later, and they found out that they weren’t untouchable after all. Neal went to prison. Kate is in trouble now, running from something bigger than the rest of them, under somebody’s thumb, somewhere no one could help her, no matter how hard Neal tried. Mozzie is alone and losing his hard-earned anonymity the more time he spends trying not to be alone, the more time he spends with Neal. And Bela is dead at twenty-four.

Neal wonders what name she was buried under. He doesn’t even know if she had a funeral.

Peter had left an apple on Neal’s desk. Neal eyes it but can’t find the stomach for it. 

(Tonight, Neal will tell Mozzie about his day, and they’ll talk about Bela, and they’ll get a little morose, and Mozzie will say, _She told me once that she was afraid of Hell_. Neal won’t say anything, but he’ll think about what she’d told him, that one vulnerable conversation—if it wasn’t for that night, Neal might’ve believed that Bela Talbot wasn’t afraid of anything.)

He starts writing reports on the plausibility of the unsolved cases in the left pile being attributed to Bela Talbot.  _I remember you_ ,  he tries to say.  _You were here. I remember. And, hey. Maybe once you’ve got the credit you’re owed for all this, they’ll teach a unit on you in some class at Quantico. It might not be so bad if the Quantico crew remembers your name, too, huh? An enemy recruit writing a paper about how you foiled them all?_

Bela would’ve said something like,  _I don’t need any of that, fuck the feds,_ but she would’ve preened knowing that they knew she’d outsmarted them; she would’ve liked being known for what she did best.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: I hadn’t read this fanfic until after I posted my own but it’s bela & neal and it’s perfect and it’s everything I wish I’d written, go read it. [ draw the line somewhere by tolkiengirl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7971418)


End file.
